He's bigger than me, he's in bigger shape than me,
he's younger than me, and he has a shaved head.
So actually, he'll probably use me
to get out of trouble more than the opposite.
There's lots of mystery surrounding whether this will be
Woody's last Toy Story film.
Which character in your career have you
found it hardest to say goodbye to?
Oh dear, that's interesting.
By the time you're finished with any individual character,
you're really quite exhausted
and you're a bit wrung out, like a bit of a rag.
If I could go back and play another character
again and again and again and again, though,
the one that I had a great amount of fun with
was Mr. White, Mr. Amos White,
who is the manager of The Wonders and he worked for Play-Tone Records.
He was a mercurial and mysterious beast.
I'd like to go back and plumb the depths of him a little bit more.
Woody's there for Andy and Bonnie growing up, no matter what.
Did you have a Woody growing up?
I had a Major Matt Mason.
You don't know Major Matt Mason over here.
He was an American astronaut.
He was a small-, he was about that big,
he was a rubber figure but he had wire inside
so he's bendable and poseable,
he had a helmet that you could put on and off
with a visor that could open and close,
and he cost $1.95 from Clarks Drug Store in Red Bluff, California.
So, a scenario.
If you're at Second Hand Antique Store, you walk in as a kid
and you see all the Toy Story gang there,
what would you spend your pocket money on, your $1.95?
Wow, my $1.95, I'm gonna say, would be spent on the Green Army Men.
You know, you get a bucket of Green Army Men,
you've got a lot of guys in different poses.
I view that as value for your money.
Yeah, I was sad to see them go in 3.
- Yeah? Okay. - Yeah.
A big theme in the film is listening to your inner voice,
which Buzz takes a little bit too literally.
Too seriously, yes.
Is there an instance in your career
where you were glad you listened to your inner voice?
Well, you know, that's a highfalutin question
because I think that a career, oddly enough,
is not so much shaped by the things you say yes to,
but by the things you say no to.
And there was a point, I guess, when I was a little bit older
and a little bit more financially secure
in which I realised just because they were offering the opportunity,
the job or something, it didn't mean I should take it.
So, somewhere along the course of a line,
you start saying no to things for the right reasons,
you don't relate to them, they're not a theme
that you're interested in examining, or they wouldn't be any fun.
Now, more than anything else, I say no to things
because I just don't think they're gonna be any fun.
It's like finding your inner voice
in something like Big or, like, your child?
Well, yeah, those are-, (laughter)
You always start on a motion picture
with this idea of what you're gonna land on,
and oftentimes it's not what you think it was.
There's permutations of the other people involved
or changes in the relationship you have
with the director or what have you.
A lot of times, you're working on the third day of a movie
and you're thinking, 'Oh my gosh,
we've gone down this whole other tributary here.'
'I wasn't expecting this,' and then you just keep going.
Your brother Jim is often used to record your voice
for action figures and in video games.
Have you ever used him to get out of trouble?
- My brother Jim? - Yeah.
He looks so different from me, no.
Actually, we resemble each other
probably more than anybody else in the family
but he's bigger than me, he's in bigger shape than me,
he's younger than me, and he has a shaved head.
So actually, he'll probably use me
to get out of trouble more than the opposite.
- Yeah, it's quite different. - Yeah.
You've perfected the voice of Woody.
Can you impersonate any other Toy Story characters?
The only one I can handle is Bo Peep
and it's just the way she says, 'Oh, Woody.'
That's the only thing, I wouldn't dare touch anybody else.
If you've grown up loving Toy Story characters,
what do you think that says about you?
(laughter)
These films are all about Woody and his relationships
with what are essentially his family.
I think people relate to that
because they see themselves in these characters.
They're so clearly defined from the very beginning
and I think they're very universal in that sense.
Each film, you've had the advantage of better technology,
but tried to have little effect on the characters.
Why do you think it's important to keep them untouched?
Yeah, I mean, we want them to look untouched.
We want them to feel exactly like the characters that you remember
when you're picturing in your mind's eye
what the earlier films looked like,
but we also have this new technology that we had to use,
and in the last nine years, it's developed enough
that we had to go back in and recreate the characters.
We did need to re-shade them and rework some of their articulation,
so while they look the way they used to,
we did have to bring them into the new technology.
You had a special team redesign Bo Peep.
What difference did a whole team working on one character make?
Man, it made a massive difference with Bo Peep.
They called themselves Team Bo
and it was made up of story people and animators
and artists and character designers and cloth people.
They really invested a lot of time into her,
first of all, just wanting to be true to her materials, she's porcelain,
but also making her this adventurous spirit
that we were shaping her character into.
They were the ones that helped find a way to re-craft her look
where she's repurposing the outfit that we know her from
in the first films, and she's ripped it, torn it, made it into a cape,
and is now living this adventurous life and thriving out there.
I really think, from story all the way to her look,
there's a lot of influence from the crew and Team Bo.
The new character Forky is not manufactured but made out of junk.
(laughter)
Is the animation different to the other toys, was it harder?
Yeah, we wanted to make sure that he moved
differently from everybody else.
The other characters have very smooth movements to them
but his are very rigid, almost like a baby deer being born
or something that can't really get its balance yet,
so we made sure to make his animation kind of worse.
- As clumsy as a spork is? - Exactly, yeah.
The ventriloquist's dummies are terrifying in the film.
How did you make them so creepy?
It wasn't very hard to do.
People are scared of ventriloquist's dummies.
The reason they were in there is we went and did
so much research on this film.
We went to a lot of antique stores.
Every single one of them had a dummy in the corner
just kind of staring at you,
and I had a dummy when I was a kid
so it was like, 'We need to put him in there.'
If you were a kid and you were at Second Chance Antique Store
and you saw all of the Toy Story gang,
what would you spend your pocket money on?
All of it.
(laughter) I've done it many times.
I have a huge toy collection so I've-,
the hard thing is convincing my wife that it's part of the job.
It's finished now, you've got to make a fifth.
(he sighs)
No, it was just-,
it was all about figuring out number four
and making sure that it felt like this is a part of Woody's arc
and a way that concludes it in a way that's satisfying.
We learn in the film that there was over 30 years
of Woody's life before Andy.
Do you know what he was up to or if we'll ever see it?
Woody's never told us that.
Yeah, I've asked him before and he really doesn't like to talk about it.
No, you know, there's this great implied history to Woody.
He's from the 1950s, and the point of it story-wise
is that he's had this great tenure, he's done everything right,
and he's always been played with and cared for
and he's thrived all these years.
But yeah, it is a little bit of a mystery.
We're not really sure, we just know it's been good
and he was where he needed to be for Toy Story 1
and at a point in 4 where we could really change him.
There are more to the locations than what we see on the screen.
What level of detail doesn't get noticed?
The level of detail in this film is staggering.
I still can't believe it,
there are shots where I'm blown away by how detailed they are.
I just want to pause the movie at times just to look at all of it.
Things you may not have noticed, in the antique store,
there are so many-, I think there were 10,000 items in that store,
and we hid so many Easter eggs in that store from previous films.
Is it true there's one in every shot in the antique store?
I think almost every shot, yeah, you'll see something.
Do you think they'll all get spotted or are there a few that you're like,
'Oh, no one will see them'? - Well, I'll tell you this.
I have not seen all of them yet
and I've watched the film a bunch of times.
Usually on this side of the screen, when you're supposed to be
paying attention, there's something hidden over here,
so my attention always goes back to the film and not to the background.
But I have a ten-page document that the sets team gave me
that has every item that they put in there and a frame grab,
and I haven't been able to get through the whole thing yet.
- A long document? - It's long.
Josh told me that there are over 10,000 items in the antique store.
Why is that such a big deal to animate?
You know, nothing in these movies comes for free.
You can't set up a camera and just capture something.
- Or life. - Yeah, that's true.
Everything in that store had to be built, designed, built, shaded, lit,
and so because there's just such a volume of things in one space,
it's tough to render, it's tough to set dress.
It needs to feel like an antique store, so yeah,
the biggest technical hurdle on the entire movie
was actually that antique store.
And it was a lot of the film.
- It is a lot of the film. - Yes, that too.
In the carnival, the toys run free,
but in the antique store, they're trapped.
Why did you choose the settings for these two locations?
Well, an antique store is all about history
and about things that are just considered worthless sometimes,
and they're stuck there.
We would go to an antique store for reference and look at it,
and we'd go back a year later and the same things were still there.
It's like purgatory for toys, in a way,
they're just kind of waiting.
And we put a carnival right outside because it's full of life
and there's kids everywhere and they want toys,
they're trying to win them from these games,
so it was kind of a way to torture the toys on the inside a little bit
where they're like, all they want is to be with a kid,
so that you understand where they're coming from.
They're both trapped in different ways, though.
They're trapped trying to be won.
Yeah, they all have the same goal.
In the film, we witness the magic of the carnival
through the eyes and size of a toy.
How did you manage to figure out that perspective?
Yeah, I mean, the whole Toy Story-,
all the films are about perspective and scale.
We see the world from a toy's point of view.
For those carnivals, it was fun.
We sent our art department, the sets department, our camera department,
to carnivals where we live, near Pixar in California.
They took little cameras and put them on sticks
and walked around, got on the rides, climbed under things.
They brought toys with them and filmed toys under rides
to get a feel for it.
I'm surprised they didn't get arrested or hurt.
Thank goodness they didn't, but we used all that
to really try to shoot that in an authentic way,
what it would be to be this size.
You forget how dangerous it is for a toy.
You can't just walk across the carnival,
so we wanted to put that in the film.
As Bonnie faces the fear and uncertainty of kindergarten,
she's surrounded by toys.
Why are they so good for us emotionally?
Well, I actually did some research on this.
What is the definition of a toy? Why do we even have them?
And the answer is that they help us figure out life early on.
What we're playing are these relationships,
we're figuring out dynamics between characters and between us,
like, how we relate to other people.
So, in the same way that Woody is always there for his kid,
the reason is because they are helping these kids grow up.
It doesn't matter if you're manufactured or like Sporky.
No, it doesn't matter.
- Sporky is definitely a toy. - He's a toy.
In the first film, being a lost toy is the worst thing ever,
but in this one, it's celebrated.
Why has it changed in the fourth film?
For Woody in the first film, he freaks out
when he realises he's a lost toy,
and it's something he's been terrified of for all of the movies.
But to have Bo Peep return in a way that would shock him,
showing that there are lives out there for lost toys,
I think was a big idea.
Just the idea that, you know, I go to the playground with my kids
and you see toys just left in the sandbox.
What would those toys be doing?
And so the idea was, well, they've put themselves there
to get played with, even though they don't have a kid.
So it was an idea, a way to shake Woody and wake him up a little bit.
- Bo Peep's opened his eyes? - Exactly.
There seems to be a theme of identity and self-discovery.
How did this become a focus of the film?
- Yeah. - That's good.
- That is the focus of the film
and that was kind of an idea early on,
the idea of Woody being in a new situation now, it's a new kid's room.
He's not with Andy anymore, everything's changed,
and if Bonnie's going to play with a sheriff,
it's gonna be Sheriff Jessie.
That's just the reality of the way kids play,
and he's having to deal with that new discovery
and having to figure out what does it mean
when you have to have a new purpose or find your way in a new way
when you're facing something you never thought
you were going to have to face? That's a big part of the story.
You've referenced films like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Casablanca
as inspiration for the film.
How does the story mirror the sense of a classic adventure?
Well, we looked at those films just to see the relationships
between, for example, Indiana Jones and Marion.
They are equals in that film, it's not just Indy saving her constantly.
They are both smart and they're both just as adventurous as the other,
so I just loved those dynamics
and I wanted to take this even a step further with Bo
and make her, like, five steps ahead of Woody
so that when he's out in the world with her,
she knows what's going on, she knows the relationships he has with people.
You get the sense that there's a real history there,
that she's been out there for a while.
How do you think this affects their relationship in the film?
Well, it had to be Bo Peep that came into his life again
to have this world view of being a lost toy.
I think if it was just any kind of random lost toy,
Woody would just want to run back to Bonnie as fast as he could.
So because they have this established relationship
from the previous films and we show early on how she left,
it could only be her,
because she's probably the only one he would actually stop and listen to
and want to know why she's out here and what she's doing.
More women than ever have been writing on the story this time.
How do you think it took it in a new direction?
I think it made it more authentic, to be honest.
What's great at Pixar right now
is the make-up of the story rooms are changing,
we have two directing animators that are female,
and there's kind of just been this organic change, shift, in the artist.
And our hope is that that just makes a little bit more
of a truthful, nuanced film.
How much of an influence do the voice actors actually have
on where the story goes?
Well, they have quite a bit.
We have our story, we've figured out the story for the most part,
but their performances and sometimes their ad-libbing
influences all those little beats and pieces they're in.
They'll often come with ideas that will help us.
Sometimes we'll go to them and we'll say,
'We know the shape of this but we can't quite figure this out,'
and we'll use their skills as an actor to help inform it.
Yeah, Keanu Reeves, for example, came up with the idea of him posing.
- That's right. - We told him,
we showed him it's an action figure, that it's a poseable action figure,
and he took that and just started going, 'Huh! Hah! Huh!',
and just striking poses.
And we were like, 'That's fantastic, that should be Duke Caboom,'
so that's an example of an actor
really influencing the character a lot.